BLACKSTONE, of BLACKSTONE & SONS, head of the great Coal Merchant
Firm; that the man in blue and silver, supposed to be a Hungarian
_attache_, is the junior partner in BUNNUMS & Co., the Big Cake
Purveyor; and that the warlike person, with a jingling sabre, is not
a Prussian officer, but is Deputy JONES, in the gorgeous uniform of
the Old Buckshire Yeomanry; and when he's in the City, where he began
in the usual way that millionnaires always do begin, by sweeping out
an office, he is simply JONES, of Messrs. BROWN, JONES, ROBINSON
& Co., Wharfingers. TOMMY TUCKER knows everybody, and everything
about everybody, too. Who is that lady with a splendid tiara of
diamonds?--that is the Duchess of BURLINGTON, "who"--and here, in a
semi-whisper, intended for everybody's information, he tells how those
brilliants come out for "one night only," and how they will be called
for to-morrow morning by a confidential agent from POPSHOPPER's
Establishment in the Great Loan Land. TOM TUCKER is full of these
stories. There isn't a person he doesn't know, until happening to
recognise here a one and there a one, I correct him of my own private
and personal knowledge, when he frankly admits that I am right;
and after casually explaining how he does occasionally mistake the
Countess of DUNNOYER for Lady ELIZABETH MARTIN, he goes off at a
tangent, and picks out several other distinguished-looking personages,
numbering them as "first to right," "second to left," and so forth, as
if in a collection of wax-works, giving to each one of them a name and
a history.
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